Nov 30, 2025 · 8 minute
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bourbon times well it is the long turkey weekend
It’s been something of a difficult year for the bourbon industry. In addition to tariffs reducing access to European and other markets and an even more turbocharged reduction in sales due to a very effective boycott in Canada, the big problem is the looming demographic divide, with Gen Z and younger foregoing alcohol consumption with disastrous results for an industry that has ramped up production during the last decade’s massive boom. This year we’ve seen massive companies like Dickel actually stopping distilling from September this year until June 2026, and the price of barrels on the NDP is falling through the floor (Would you like a barrel of surplus 4yr Wild Turkey for…$750?Apparently, you can get it from the brokers right now).
Some of the craft distilleries that have sprung up in the last 15 years will not be with us for much longer. This year we lost two high profile names: Kentucky Owl and Uncle Nearest. I’m not too sad to see either go; Owl sent the market into premium overdrive, and Nearest’s well-packaged story of the former slave that invented Jack Daniel’s was a good cover for selling sourced Tennessee whiskey whilst talking up a media storm about his “secret recipe”, with some interesting property purchases on the side1
The next few years will probably include the larger distilleries, such as Heaven Hill, Buffalo Trace, Beam, etc, trimming their expansion plans and pulling back on production. Now, some will celebrate this, expecting that there will be downward pressure on prices and increased age statements to keep people interested. And there’s some truth in this, and you can even see it happening this year, but we’ll still not going back to the start of the century where you could pick up Pappy 23 for under $100 from any half-decent liquor store in the country. It does mean that you can now go into such a place these days and you might see some bottles of Blanton’s on the shelves, and those special editions can now take a few weeks to sell out.
With all that said, let’s get onto the gift guide for 2025! Five bottles that are reasonably obtainable that any bourbon drinker would be pleased to receive on Christmas Day, and a choice for people with insane amounts of money.
Wild Turkey 101 8 Year
The GOAT is back (okay, technically that’s 12yr 101, but humour me a little). Yes, for the first time in over 30 years, age-stated Wild Turkey in the US is once again available nationwide. Well, mostly, anyhow. It’s an annual release rather than a perennial, but there’s quite a few bottles out there in 2025, so you should be able to track one down for $50-60 without much trouble.
To be clear, there’s no magic contained within, no great revelation. This is eight-year-old Wild Turkey. Bolder, a little more oak-forward, but otherwise, just 101, but a little more. Do not pay more than $65 for it (at very most), but a solid choice for a Christmas bottle that’s a little special than the everyday.
New Riff 8 Year Bourbon/Rye
Nothing is certain, but New Riff is one of the craft distillers that I’m reasonably sure will survive the upcoming contraction (them and Bardstown are probably safe, though the latter may have more exposure to other distilleries not paying their contract distilling fees). They finally have enough barrels laid down and aging that they expanded their core rye and bourbon lineup this year, releasing eight year variants of both. Twice as good as their standard four-year releases? Well, maybe not, but those extra four years definitely make the bourbon and the rye more complex and worthy of a spot on any bar.
(Now, the real prize from New Riff this year were the 10 year bourbon/rye High Line releases — you can’t find them for anything less than silly money right now, so I can’t recommend you get hold of them, but they point the way to some wonderful further additions to their core as 2028 comes into view)
Remus Repeal IX
I remember, many years ago, perhaps 2007 or so, coming across a website that talked about the scandal that so many bourbon and rye companies in the USA all contained whiskey that could be traced back to one distillery in Indiana. While some of the outrage was justifiably aimed at the companies doing their level best to hide the ‘Distilled In Indiana’2 label that was legally required, there was definitely an air of “these people are ripping you off by selling generic, lesser quality bourbon”. These days, that era of MGP bourbon will probably set you back at least $300-400 a bottle on the secondary market. Turns out, MGP makes fantastic bourbon and always has done.
Anyway, eventually, somebody at MGP asked: “hang on, lads, maybe we should sell some of this ourselves?", and since 2015, they’ve created multiple product lines selling their own distillate at mid-level all the way up to super-premium ($200 and above levels). But for me, I think the way to sample the best of current3 MGP bourbon is through the Remus Repeal series. It’s an annual release; a blend of various bourbons to celebrate Repeal Day (5th December). The majority of this year’s blend is 10-11 year old bourbon, with 7% being provided by a very robust 19 year addition. Absolutely fabulous, and can be yours for $80-90 without having to spend a lot of time tracking it down.
Some weird MGP That’s Aged in Florida (Copper & Cask)
The other thing that’s great about MGP that ends up in NDP hands? They do weird things with it. Sometimes obvious things like sticking it in sherry barrels or some more obscure spirit, adding Brazilian wood, or even barrels laced with honey. Other times, NDPs take the barrels from Indiana and continue aging them somewhere else…and this is where Copper & Cask come in. They a relatively new outfit, running since 2021, and what they do is take MGP barrels and age them elsewhere. But what you’re looking for here are the 7-9 year old single barrel selections that they age in Florida. I’ll confess that I can only make wave my hands in the air muttering something about “humidity”, but these bottles have the colour and complexity of bourbon 5-6 years older; deep amber and with a long-lasting finish.
These selections are a little harder to find, given that they’re not a big outfit, even by craft standards, but if you do find a shop that sells them…they tend to hang around, perhaps because of the idea that “Florida” bourbon is sacrilege. As of posting, The Party Source across the river has six different barrels available, in the region of $60-$75 each. All great, and to be honest, I’m eyeing up their Cigar Blend as I type.
Old Grand-Dad 7 Years Old Bottled In Bond
Many, many years ago, there was a distillery with the somewhat unimaginative name of National Distillers. They fell on bad times in the 1980s during the height of the bourbon bust, and their brands were sold to Jim Beam (now part of the Suntory empire). One of those brands was Old Grand-Dad (OGD). Now, if you ever have the chance of having a pour of a 1970s/80s ND OGD, then please, please do so. CVG airport used to have a bar where you could get vintage drinks, and I’ll confess that I once dialled into a work meeting there whilst drinking this transcendent, almost liquid gingerbread bourbon.
Something odd happened after the sale to Beam. They insist that they’re still using yeast that can be traced back to the ND era, and it’s true that yeast flavour profiles can change as time goes on, but the Old Grand-Dad of today does not taste like the bottles of yesteryear. Which is great if you’re flogging them on the secondary market. For the rest of us, OGD has been a good pour in its Bottled-in-bond (4 year) or 114 (non-age stated) variants. Like Wild Turkey, this year, they’ve added a new annual release with an age statement: Old Grand-Dad 7ys Bottled-In-Bond. And it’s great. Is it the ND version restored? No, but chock-full of cinnamon spice and a little bit of a punch (unlike the 114, which will put you on the floor if you’re not careful). This has a MSRP of around $45, but I’ve seen it in Costco for $38, and would make any bourbon fan happy this Christmas.
Wild Turkey Master’s Keep Beacon
Do you have more money than sense? This bottle has a retail price of $300, but you’ll be lucky to find a bottle for under $500 at this point in the year. It’s the last of Wild Turkey’s Master’s Keep line, a blend of 16 and 10 year old bourbons, bottled at an ABV of 59% (maybe the highest Wild Turkey bottling ever?), and from all accounts is a staggeringly good drink. I would not know, and I am kicking myself a little for not buying that one bottle of it in Costco I saw for the low, low price of $259. But there’s always more useful things to spend the money on4. I can’t really recommend spending this much money on a single bottle of bourbon unless your disposable income is “first against the wall when the revolution comes”, but by all the reviews I’ve seen, if you must gift a 2025 release that will make jaws drop, this is it. For the rest of us, perhaps a pour in a decent bar at some point?
Nov 16, 2025 · 2 minute
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thanksgiving???? crime toddler
The realization that Thanksgiving is the week after next feels like a grand trip the universe is playing on us all; I don’t even have a menu planned. It’s going to be a quiet one this year - no large numbers of guests, and I’m even going to cut back on the desserts probably just down to four or five. Very quiet.
Maeryn continues to surprise. She knows enough now to be full of crime. “Oh, you turned the light out and left me in the nursery? Let me build a pile of dangerously arranged cushions so I can stand on them to reach the light switch!” Or how to swipe a lollipop without us noticing, work out how headphones work, and somehow, somewhere, obtained the knowledge that Pikachu exists. She’s also decided she can read, as she pulled “The Monster At The End Of This Book” out of my hands last night, saying “I read.” While she can’t, she did a very good impression of it, including managing to get some of the tone and bits of Grover’s voice down pat. It was an interesting bookend to a week where I looked into how American schools have taught children how to read and ran screaming.
Tammy and Maeryn are off to Tennessee next weekend to see Tammy’s mum, so I have a wild weekend of carpet cleaning and Christmas wrapping planned. Maybe some baking and documentaries from the 70s and the 80s. Absolutely wild!
On the one hand, Rebellion certainly aren’t going to stop publishing Dredd. But there’s a number of ways you could kill Dredd and still continue, and this is a Wagner story…it would be something if they let him finish out the character he created all the way back in 1977.
Nov 7, 2025 · 3 minute
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Bicester Village London Village Cincinnati Village All the drinking
One of my ‘lovable’ quirks is that when I travel on planes, in addition to gripping the armrest tightly for most of the duration (whether it’s one hour or nine), I come prepared with an iPad stuffed to the gills of vintage television. Whilst everybody else is watching orange and teal, flight attendants often get a good eyeful of something like Gangsters or a World In Action episode from 1984 featuring miners’ wives from Nottingham and Yorkshire having a slanging match1.
The star of this week’s trip home was this frankly terrifying episode of QED, where they investigate the somewhat frightening levels of drinking in some 16-18 year olds. Barrels of beer a week are mentioned. Entertaining in itself, but two amazing highlights: they give a bus driver doubles until he can’t judge how wide a gap he needs to drive his double-decker bus through two traffic cones, and at 24:00, the interviewer asks the teenagers ‘well, what do you think about people that don’t drink alcohol in pubs?’, leading up to a wonderful unguarded reaction from one of them at 24:25, then immediately realising what she just said on national television. I don’t know how that survived the edit.
My parents had a quiet 50th wedding anniversary, but it was lovely to be back there to celebrate it. Hopefully next year, we will stay long enough in Bicester or meet up with a bunch of people. It is a luxury that I can do these things, and I’m grateful that we could pull it off…as well as get hold of the largest card that Moonpig offers.
London is always London; never quite the same, but not all that different. The IBM building on the South Bank somehow is still standing, the Croft thrives, restaurants come and go. Sava and I had a great long conversation over whisky in the Melody Bar during the afternoon, and in the evening, having evaluated a few quite different options, I went off and found an Irish pub serving spice bags. And then Dishoom in the morning, which obviously marks me out as a filthy hipster (I even went to the Shoreditch location, but this was mainly just so I could visit the Barbican on my way there), but I can’t deny the power of the egg and sausage naan roll after a considerable number of drinks the night before. Oh, and a secret visit to Fortitude Bakery to surprise Tammy with a few sweet treats on my return.
I’d just point out to the rest of the team that there is more to London than concrete.
— Sava, saying bizarre things in our team’s Slack channel. I suppose there’s also tube stations…
Now, I’m flying across the ocean, laden down with Percy Pigs, mixed fruits, books, and a giant poster of the Los Campesinos! concert we went to earlier in the year. I think I’ve done all my travelling for 2025; it’s time to put a head or two down to sort out some things at work, but more importantly: the desserts at Christmas time are simply not going to make themselves…
”I didn’t realize I was talking to a Tory” — the point where you feel that if the cameras weren’t there, handbags would be flying. ↩︎
Another mostly quiet week - things going on in the background, most of which are work-related (including an absolute whopper that I simply can’t tell anybody). But I have started planning my trip to London next week, which currently seems to centre around whiskey, concrete, and spice bags. It is going to be such a quick visit though, so I sadly won’t really have a chance to see anybody that isn’t Sava from work or my family. But next time, I promise, it’ll be a longer trip1
Of course, I think I said that back in February, but you know, I meant it then too… ↩︎
Oct 16, 2025 · 6 minute
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minneapolis??? adventures in the swatch shop SKYWAYS
“You are the last honest man in this country. But with that wonderful accent, you’re not from around here, are you?”
What happened was this: the weekend before going to Minneapolis, I discovered that there was a Swatch shop in the Mall of America, and that they took online reservations for pick-up. And earlier in the week, I’d discovered that Swatch had just released a reimagining of the 1988 watch, Flumotions. As I was going to be there anyway, why not pick one up?
On Monday, I sauntered into the shop, got served by somebody who was still being taught the ropes by a more senior person, and was handed the watch. They were also both curious about the vintage Swatch watch I was wearing. Anyway, off I went. “Have a great day!” I got on the train. And the doubts set in. I went through my emails from the weekend and re-read them. Plain as day: “This is not a purchase. You’ll pay when you pick the watch up.” But they had just given it to me and sent me on my way.
When I finally got checked into the hotel, I gave the shop a ring:
“Erm…so I was in your shop a couple of hours ago and picked up a watch?”
“Oh, yes! The British guy in the red shirt? Is thee something wrong with the watch?”
“Well, no. It’s just that I think I haven’t paid for it.”
“I’ll…just have a chat with my manager…can I call you back?”
So that’s how I ended up going back to the Mall of America Wednesday night to make sure nobody got into any trouble. Watch purchased. Praise given. Leaving, face red with embarrassment. But at least everything got sorted in the end.
Anyway, the Mall. The largest in the Western Hemisphere! And…it’s alright. Despite the 2000s upgrade it has clearly received, with all the supports and cladding coated in high-gloss white (look at the difference between pictures from the 1990s and 2015 onwards), the overall feeling of being in MoA is that you have stepped into a time warp and somehow ended up back in the mid to late 90s. Hanson, TLC, and En Vogue are piped overhead as you wander past Barnes & Noble and Francesca’s and get lunch at the Rainforest Café, right next to the Food Court. It’s like a world trapped in the End of History; everything in a time bubble and you can just go on SpongeBob rides without having to deal with the real world.
Of course, the picture of this reality is broken with it being a Pepsi Mall, a sure sign that this is just a cruel, twisted fantasy. But, I did appreciate that when I walked into the mall from the transit centre, the first thing I saw was a stage just outside the main atrium. Reader, I did look for the Kid On The Escalator.
If the Mall was not exactly what I was after, then another part of Minneapolis was. I’d even forgotten it, really, until the train through the centre reminded me of what I was missing.
Minneapolis is home to the largest enclosed skywalk — not just in North America, not just the Western Hemisphere, but the entire world. 10 miles of it cross-crossing the city centre. And it is absolutely glorious. I haven’t had as much fun since I last wandered around the Barbican for an entire day1. Like the Mall, it is something of its Time. But as bits of it were built at different times, that is not so bad! One moment you’re wandering around a tiny corridor that last saw a new carpet in the mid-90s and now resembles liminal Adam Curtis b-roll footage, the next you wander into Wells Fargo, with their idea of “would you like to pretend you’re in a New York bank from 1923? We’ve got you covered.” Yes, it does default to “corporate late 80s/mid 90s” — many of the skyways enter into banks or big business atriums. But while MoA made me just feel weird, the “Nakatomi Plaza” feel was apparently just what I was looking for.
So, yes, it’s very much the usual problematic American “public/private” mix, with the skyway connections being owned and operated by the containing buildings, resulting in a system that is only really navigable during business hours, but my goodness, you need to step into Government Center. Is it a building that you’d go into normally? Of course not! As a station along the skyway, though, you transit through it, expecting…well, not a lot, and it’s just amazing. The building is bi-sected with a central atrium that allows you to see both exposed sides, all the way up to the 24th floor. I stopped in the middle just staring upwards for a good couple of minutes. Butler Square is completely different — late 70s construction, but instead of glass and steel, it’s all exposed timber from the old Butler Brothers warehouse, making it feel more like an Ewok Village or something from Expo ‘67, right next to Target Center and Target Field (which of course both have red skyways). The different amounts of care that parts of the system has is also a strength — because yes, you do get bits that have the same set of chains over and over again, but in other, more run-down spaces, you get watch repairs, Korean egg sandwiches, and other little delights. I hear that before the pandemic it was a little more lively, and there’s plenty of empty shopfronts as you go around, but I will say that it never felt empty in any of my travels during the week.
One morning, I walked to the work with “This Is What She’s Like” playing. It was transcendental. Walking across the skyway, looking left and right, seeing parallel skyways either side, repeating into the distance, with people walking in time with the beat. In time, in time
So, er, yeah. My love of the skyways was hilariously over-the-top, and apparently infectious, to the extent that on Wednesday, I led an _expedition of co-workers from breakfast to the workplace. I just love a completely different way to see a city. Streets in the sky were always a good idea, and we were absolute fools to have been talked out of them.
Coming up to week 2…3? of being ill. I’m currently left with a throat that is either suffering from mucus buildup or acid reflux (or more likely, both), a crackly throat first thing in the morning, a need to be around a box of tissues at all times…and really, I am very sick of being sick. Having to change plans every weekend because I barely have the energy to do anything is getting old. And I’m off to Minneapolis tomorrow…three airports isn’t going to make things worse, of course…
(as an aside, I remain tickled at all my American coworkers that look on in horror when I tell them I plan to use public transit on onsite visits. Especially in San Francisco - you get out of the airport straight into BART and just stay on one train until you get to the financial centre…and work or your hotel is literally a five minute walk away. Why on earth would you want to sit on 101 in heavy traffic???)
Anyway, Maeryn and I will have a blow-out “Daycare is closed for a training day that coincidentally happens to be Columbus Day, but we’re not celebrating it in particular” day, even if I have to pump myself full of steroids to get through the day. A Daddy Promise.
Sep 28, 2025 · 3 minute
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transformers megatron and yet more
Well, I guess it’s time for my semi-annual post of “how I’m almost finished buying Transformers”, a regular series which has probably been going on since about…I don’t know, 2002? Anyway, the big purchase this year was in the Studio Series 86 toyline, which is basically “all your favourite G1 toys from the film just before they encounter horrible deaths, though we’ll also sell you versions so you can re-enact childhood trauma?". They’ve finally got around to Megatron.
Megatron is always a controversial figure, because every time a new one is released, a bunch of people will complain that he doesn’t turn into a gun and their childhood is ruined, etc, etc. Of course, Hasbro probably a) doesn’t want the publicity of a bunch of ICE agents or just regular cops shooting children dead because they’re holding a replica Walther P38, and b) even if they did, it’s illegal to sell toys like that these days in rather large markets like…oh, the US. So, anyway, since the early 90s, Megatron has been (mostly) a tank. And it’s been fine.
Here, I have to make a confession because I never actually really liked the original Megatron toy. My friends had Megatron — I played with him, even borrowed him for a few days here and there…but I had no desire to own him. Yes, he does have articulation, but his robot mode barely holds together, and then there’s gun mode. Which sure, is great if you’re playing War, but it is absolutely useless as a play pattern with other Transformers as it’s so big that no other Transformer can hold him. So it’s a big gun that can’t really stand on its own. Great! Meanwhile, Prime turns into a very decent lorry with a fun trailer1 So I had no real desire to add him to my collection, instead preferring more interesting Decepticon leaders like Scorpononk. Even during the Action Master years, I plumped for a Shockwave figure over the non-transforming Megatron (although, to be fair, that was probably more determined by Shockwave being available as a £5 figure whereas Megatron only came with a £30 vehicle playset).
All the subsequent Megatrons2 have been perfectly reasonable, but they normally gave lip-service to the original G1 toy or animation model. Studio Series 86 Megatron is different, though, because Hasbro and Takara have performed wizardry.
Somehow, they’ve managed to create a toy that has an almost-perfect rendition of the G1 comic/cartoon model and get a serviceable tank mode out of him, but at the same time hiding most of the tank details when he’s in robot form. Finally, a Megatron without compromise.
(is this the only Transformer I bought this year? hahaha, no. But one in the series of “I don’t think I ever have to buy another version of this figure ever again”)
Actually, I have this problem with pretty much all the Micro Change toys that made it into the first few years of Transformers. Soundwave only gets away with it because the tapes are so fun. ↩︎
We’re not counting Beast Wars Megatron, because, yes, he’s awesome, but also, not, canonically, Megatron. ↩︎
Family visit is over, so it’s time for a bullet-point catchup round!
I complain about this country’s attitude to urban design (basically: “how do you want to die today, pedestrian?") a lot, but fair is fair: Americans really do know how to make a park. This summer, in addition to the smaller (but still very reasonable: have you ever seen a British council-provided playground that has covered seating and a barbeque?) parks, we’ve also been to Summit Park, West Chester Splash Park, and as of last weekend, Tower Park in Fort Thomas. The latter in particular is pretty impressive: multiple multi-storey adventure playgrounds, a zipwire1, puzzles, swings (of different types covering all ages from toddlers to adults), a garden with musical instrument flowers, and a covered area where you could reasonably fit an entire street inside. I also see that the forest that is a few blocks from our house2 is getting a bike park later in the year. For all their faults, Americans seem to put a lot more effort in than your typical British council…
New iPhone has turned up after they decided to attempt delivery on a Friday night just as soon as I put Maeryn in the bath (and didn’t even try the doorbell). I am therefore undergoing the familiar journey of “oooh, shiny new iPhone! Look at the new camera!…and now it’s just the phone that has lost all my Kindle bookmarks” At least this time it’s a shiny new orange colour?3 (update after writing this - it did not copy over my iMessages, so I’m attempting to upload 1m messages into the cloud before I have to send the old phone back)
I do wish my family could have a flight either from Heathrow to Cincinnati and vice versa without something going wrong. I have never known any other flight that consistently seems to not get a jetbridge (at Heathrow!!!?).
Although I seem to have avoided adding a new collection to my life by simply buying a fancy (well…Chinese copy of a Mont Blanc, so fancy at $50 instead of $1000) fountain pen, I was not prepared for all the possibilities of different inks. Which is why the house now has…a lot more fountain ink in it than you might expect. I have, so far, resisted buying Ohio River…
Thanks to Dad, our cardboard mountain has receded, and I now have a working garage door opener. Frankie Says You’re 73% American.
Mum continues to be the best interrogator that MI6 never hired. At various points during their holiday, I left her alone in a shop or restaurant for under a minute or two, and she had extracted the lifestory of servers, checkout assistants, random people in the street…
We had to print stickers of the family (especially ‘GRANDDAD!') after they left for one sad toddler.
Bonnie can move quite fast in an electric wheelchair.
Hades II on Switch 2? I’ll take two!
I do not approve of the zipwire. Or at least, I don’t approve of a 2.5 year deciding it’s the best thing ever and that she needs to be on it constantly. ↩︎
Technically, I guess we live in a suburb, but we’re still inside the city of Cincinnati itself, and the centre is about five minutes away by car, so it’s not like we’re in a wilderness area or anything. ↩︎
I’m in the iPhone upgrade programme, which is basically a rolling 2-year 0% interest cost-only loan to always have the latest model. Which is a bloody good deal, but it doesn’t half make you jaded… ↩︎
